It may still technically be winter, but I am thinking spring! It is time to get back into the craft room and work on some spring and Easter inspired rafts! I joined the All Things Creative Team this month, to bring you more than ONE HUNDRED easy to do spring and Easter craft ideas. Lots of great ways to decorate Easter eggs, lots of floral projects and plenty of pastels. You have to check them out:

Hello new friends! My name is Elisha from PneumaticAddict.com and I'm new around here. I'll be contributing cool DIY projects and trying to turn you all into Master Builders. Like my buddy Kim, I'm a girl who loves her power tools. You can usually find me in the garage, covered in sawdust or creating new, free building plans to share on my site.

If you are a mom of kids who still live at home, you are probably facing MOUNDS and MOUNDS of laundry every week. Laundry is high on my list of my least favorite chores (well, not so much washing but, but folding it and putting it away!) And now that my kids are heading back to school and starting all their fall sports, the amount of laundry they generate has definitely gone up!

But I recently came across this quote from Thomas Monson and I was struck by how close it hit home:

"If you are still in the process of raising children be aware that the piles and piles of laundry will disappear all too soon and that you will, to your surprise, miss them profoundly.”

I got really lucky during this third week of the $25 Per Week Budgeting Challenge. I was starting the week with less than $10 thanks to my overage last week, and we were in desperate need of both milk and gas. That alone would have eaten though the $10. But as fortune would have it, February is the month that my Costco rebate certificate arrives in the mail!

I LOVED the theme of this month’s Power Tool Challenge: Your favorite power tool. That was a no brainer for me.. since my favorite would be the one I”ve been using a lot lately. My scroll saw!

Plus it is unusual to have a power tool challenge project that doesn’t involve ANY lumber.. but this month, my only materials were old thrift store books! Yes books!
These were $1/each at the thrift store, and using NOTHING more than my scroll saw, I ended up with some super cute book art that looked perfect on my office shelves:

They are so pretty all clustered together in a group, with all the gorgeous textures. It is so clean and pretty, but the real stuff can be pricey unless you get really lucky and stumble upon it at a yard sale or thrift store. Lately it has been near impossible to find authentic and inexpensive milk glass at thrift stores.

The send week of the $25 Per Week Budgeting Challenge was a lot tougher than the first week. Maybe I was getting cocky, but this week we really started to feel the squeeze. This week also contained Valentine’s Day, which meant I had to make some hard choices.

Our family has a 18 year tradition of going to Kentucky Fried Chicken on Valentine’s Day. My husband and I spent our first Valentine’s Day at KFC when we couldn’t get seated at any other nice restaurant back when we were in collage. It sorta became a running joke and we have done it every year since. Now we take our kids (which means they have spent every Valentine’s days of their entire lives there!)

By Tuesday I didn’t have any money left in the budget, and we talked about not going to KFC, but we couldn’t pass it up. So instead I decided to float the cost of dinner to next week’s budget. Thank goodness KFC is really affordable and we didn’t have a tradition of $100 steak house dinners on Valentine’s Day! Because of that we will still have a little money for next week!

Earlier this month I was invited to read Beth Kobliner's book Make Your Kid a Money Genius (Even If You’re Not) in order to share my experience with my readers. It turns out that the book was really great and it inspired me to get my kids involved in this year’s $25/week budgeting challenge. Beth’s book reiterated my belief that setting and sticking to a strict budget should involve the entire family!

I survived the first 7 days of the $25 Per Week Budgeting Challenge. The first week is always the easiest since I’m starting off with a full fridge and pantry, gas in the car and plenty of perservenance.

When I started blogging more than 5 years ago, I was shooting photos with an old flip phone! My photos were dark and cluttered and blurry.. and pretty much AWFUL.

I'm almost embarrassed to include this photo here

Since then, I have gotten so much better! Granted, I still have a lot to learn, but at least now items are actually recognizable!

A lot of the improvement came from trial and error, but a lot of it has to be attributed to the fact I am just using better tools. I now shoot almost exclusively with a DSLR, and have a designated photography space for when I do crafts and recipes.

Many people have asked me "What would you spend money on if you were just getting started with blog photography?"

These are 10 things I have and use, and that have made my blogging photography better and easier. I am a Canon girl, but I have also included a few Nikon options.. just make sure whatever accessories you choose, that they are compatible to whatever Camera you have now.

Hi friends! Alicia here again from Sew What Alicia. I am so excited to be here with you again with another fun tutorial! I know you expect me to teach you sewing skills but today I have something for your sewing room. Here is a no sew teacup pin cushion tutorial that you can make in 10 minutes with very few supplies! Scroll to the bottom for a full video tutorial.

Anyone who knows me knows I am sort of crazy about Star Wars. Like CRAZY!! And my kids are the same way too. So I have been looking up cute free printable school valentine ideas from other bloggers that are Star Wars themed.

Shockingly, I’ve never done one myself, but there are so many fantastic Star Wars school valentines already floating around on Pinterest that I figured I could just use one of them. But deciding which was my favorite was nearly impossible. So I have rounded up 25 of my favorites.